men – Hot Airhttp://hotair.com
The world’s first, full-service conservative Internet broadcast networkSat, 10 Dec 2016 01:41:13 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.116302432Obama to American men: You sure you’re not holding Hillary to a sexist double standard?http://hotair.com/archives/2016/11/01/obama-american-men-sure-youre-not-holding-hillary-sexist-double-standard/
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 02:41:28 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3929821Actual quote: “I know that my wife is not just my equal but my superior.” Partly he’s nodding at Michelle’s popularity with that line, but it doubles as a nice patronizing pander to women generally coming from the most powerful man in the world.

This reminds me of Trump’s outreach to black voters in September insofar as the apparent audience and the intended audience aren’t the same. Trump spoke to a few black crowds hoping, sure, that it might move the needle a bit for him among that group, but Republican expectations about making inroads with black voters are always modest, to put it mildly. The “real” audience for Trump’s outreach to minorities was white college grads who normally tilt Republican in presidential elections but who have been leery about Trump this year because of his demagogic impulses. There are big, game-changing numbers in that group if he can claw back their votes from Hillary. His appeals to minority groups were aimed at showing upscale whites that they could trust him to behave responsibly in office.

By the same token, Obama’s pitch here is ostensibly aimed at men — a reliably pro-Trump group — but, lord knows, politely scolding them for their sexism towards poor, crooked Hillary Clinton isn’t going to do much to encourage them to take a second look at her. The real audience is women, of course. They’re Hillary’s base. Democrats wanted the election to be a referendum on Trump, but now it’s suddenly become a referendum on Clinton. Obama’s trying to reframe it yet again as a referendum on sexism, with men supposedly poised to hand the presidency to a thoughtless boor because of their own sexist blind spot toward Hillary — unless, of course, women voters turn out in droves to stop them, nudge nudge. If you doubt that this is the liberal message for the campaign’s final week, read Byron York’s account of Clinton’s own rally today. She brought Alicia Machado back to introduce her. They’re going all-in on one last “war on women” push before Tuesday.

The key bit runs from 23:30 of the clip below to 27:10. Obama also called Trump “uniquely unqualified” and “temperamentally unfit” to be president at this same rally, which is going to make that joint photo op in the Oval Office between the two of them two weeks from now awwwwk-ward.

]]>3929821A male feminist ponders how you could possibly like Trump if you know any womenhttp://hotair.com/archives/2016/10/25/feminist-ponders-possibly-like-trump-know-women/
Wed, 26 Oct 2016 00:41:21 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3928637In most every poll we’ve seen thus far, Donald Trump does better with men than he does with women. On second thought, a more accurate way to express this phenomenon would be to say that Trump does pretty well with men, but a shocking number of women seem to absolutely loathe him. Part of the reason can be found in a mountain of self-inflicted damage which Trump managed to accumulate through decades of doing interviews with Howard Stern, acquiring beauty pageants and living a very wealthy, “frat boy” lifestyle. If you’re going to get into American politics these days, that sort of thing is going to come back to haunt you. But no matter how you view his previous antics, feminists and liberals have seen tremendous success in translating that to a picture of misogyny, painting Trump as an uber-general in the War on Women.

It’s a portrayal which has clearly sunk in among more independent leaning female voters as well as the reliable base of the Democrats. But it’s also led to a bit of navel gazing and side-eye looks from some of the ladies when it comes to the men in their own lives who might be supporting Trump. How, they wonder, could you possibly live with – or even know – a wonderful woman like me or your mom or your sister and still agree to vote for that monster? That’s the question being posed by Jesse Singal at New York Magazine this week and he thinks he’s sussed out the answer. Some of you may be infected with the more crass version of “hostile sexism” (which means you’re open about being a brute), but most of you otherwise good guys are unknowing perpetrators of benevolent sexism.

Benevolent sexism is different. Benevolent sexists endorse a paternalistic view of the world in which women are to be cherished and protected, in part because they aren’t quite equal to men. Oftentimes, seemingly positive sentiments about women are manifestations of benevolent sexism. People who score high on this measure agree with statements like “No matter how accomplished he is, a man is not truly complete as a person unless he has the love of a woman,” “A good woman should be set on a pedestal by her man,” and “Men should be willing to sacrifice their own well being in order to provide financially for the women in their lives.” A good example of benevolent sexism? All those tweets following Trump’s Access Hollywood tape about “wives and daughters.”

[Peter] Glick explained that the overarching theory here is that benevolent sexism evolved culturally as a way to maintain the gender hierarchy while also allowing men to enjoy close companionship with women, consensual sex, and so on. In other words: If you adopt the stance that part of your role is to protect your wife or girlfriend and to be made better by her goodness, then you get those aforementioned perks, without losing your place in the gender hierarchy. “You’re the knight in shining armor, you’re Prince Charming — rather than, ‘You’re the oppressor,’” said Glick.

If you managed to make it through both of those paragraphs and any of this cranial treacle sounded familiar, it’s likely because you’ve been following the other culture wars engulfing America at the moment. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to have been born a white, Christian, straight and non-developmentally disabled CisMale (WCSNDDCM), you probably haven’t been able to avoid it. This type of assumed misogyny is a nearly perfect parallel to the theory that you are racist by definition if you are white, no matter how well you get along with and support people of other races, how long you’ve held your job writing for Mother Jones or the number of Black Lives Matter marches you’ve participated in. You see, you just don’t realize you’re a racist because you can’t recognize all your privilege. In the same fashion, if you happen to be in love with a girl and feel a need to protect her and make sacrifices to ensure her happiness and security, you’re unwittingly insulting her by implying that she’s a lesser being who couldn’t manage it for herself. You may think you’re holding the door open for her at the restaurant, but in actuality you are dangling the keys to her chains in front of her… or something.

In Mr. Singal’s essay (with full apologies if I was suppose to use some other prefix… Mx perhaps?) we find what may be the prime example of the great irony in our current age. As the Social Justice Warriors have advanced their agenda, screaming to the high heavens (or whatever version of posthumous dimensions you may or may not believe in) about inequity and the need for acceptance and The Great Coming Together, we’re converting a society once famed for being a melting pot into this swirling miasma filled with colliding pigeonholes. Everyone has to fit into their own corner of this toxic stew for the new system to work. At the bottom there is a massive layer composed of The Enemy, better known as the previously referenced WCSNDDCM. But even if your rise above that lowly station, you must qualify for some other definition: gay, trans, black, Hispanic, female, genderless, Muslim, atheist, colorful or colorblind. Should you dare to cross out of your lane for a moment you are lumped in with The Enemy until sufficient recompense is offered. That’s why gay pride events are being shut down by BLM counterprotesters. You see, it’s not enough to be oppressed by The Man. You have to be oppressed for the right reasons.

And now, thanks to the gross infection of testosterone perceived in the Trump campaign, we’ve dusted off the Battle of the Sexes from the sixties. Your Y chromosome won’t be earning you a pass into this party, my friend. That extra leg on your 23rd pair may as well be a scarlet letter branded on your forehead unless you’re fortunate enough to “identify” as a woman. For the rest of you, the game is afoot.

So today the proponents of such snake oil have a new chew toy to play with and the women in your life may need a moment alone for a word with you. Even if they never noticed your inherent misogyny before, should you mention that you’re considering voting for Donald Trump, the depth and breadth of your subconscious hatred of women will have been exposed. Hopefully you’ve got a comfortable couch to sleep on after you return from the Hillary Clinton reeducation camps.

]]>3928637Pew data: Heavy majority of asylum seekers in Europe are young men under the age of 35http://hotair.com/archives/2016/08/03/pew-data-heavy-majority-of-asylum-seekers-in-europe-are-young-men-under-the-age-of-35/
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 22:21:09 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3916314Two tables from the new survey by Pew, which I missed yesterday but which Ross Douthat didn’t. Table one: Where are the refugees coming from? As it turns out, exactly where you expect.

Of the top 10, only Eritrea and Nigeria aren’t majority-Muslim and both of those countries contain large Muslim minorities.

Table two: What’s the gender split on who’s coming? As it turns out … pretty much what you’d expect.

Compare the gender parity in arrivals from Serbia, Ukraine, and Russia to the heavy male skew in arrivals from non-European, i.e. mostly Muslim, nations. The non-European country with the greatest percentage of women seeking asylum is Somalia, with a measly 31 percent. The male skew for Pakistan is 95/5. For Syria, which sent the greatest number of refugees to Europe of any country by far, it’s 71/29. In every non-European case, the percentage of men aged 18-34 — just that subgroup, excluding minors and men aged 35-and-over — exceeds the percentage of women of all ages.

As Douthat notes, one of three things is going to happen. Either the young male refugees will be allowed to bring wives to Europe from back home, they’ll find wives among the native population, or they’ll remain unmarried — and knowing what the world knows from painful experience about coping with large populations of young unmarried men, option three isn’t much of an option. If you choose option one, letting refugees bring their wives over (or giving priority going forward to single young women refugees from the Middle East to increase the pool of marriageable Muslim women in Europe), you’re obviously committing to accepting a much bigger pool of refugees overall in the years ahead. If you choose option two, capping immigration and forcing refugees who are already in Europe to find wives there, you’re guaranteeing that some pool of local men, either natives or refugees or a mix of the two, ends up doomed to resentful bachelorhood because there simply aren’t enough women to marry. One way or another, option two ultimately leaves you stuck with option three, which sounds like a fine recipe for social harmony. One would think that Germany’s open-borders brain trust, before embarking on its grand cultural re-engineering project with Middle Eastern immigrants, would have at least insisted on gender parity among new arrivals in order to ease the strain of assimilation, in particular assimilation into domesticity. Nope. What do they do now about this ferocious gender skew? Maybe it’s time for a national conversation about how many European refugees the U.S. should be prepared to accept circa 2045.

]]>3916314IKEA furniture test proves girls are dumbhttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/12/19/ikea-furniture-test-proves-girls-are-dumb/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/12/19/ikea-furniture-test-proves-girls-are-dumb/#commentsSat, 19 Dec 2015 23:01:37 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3887990With Christmas eve looming, trust me when I tell you that this article will provide vital information for any of you who will be assembling large gifts to put under the tree or for yourself after the festivities are concluded. There has long been a belief that there’s a difference between the brains of men and women which somehow makes the boys better at spatial configuration and visualizing three dimensional figures than the girls. Is it true or is this just an artifact of gender biased testing from the bad old days? The Washington Post reported this week on a fascinating test designed to solve this riddle by allowing men and women to assemble IKEA furniture both with and without the directions. The results were… mixed.

The study asked 40 men and 40 women, all university-aged, to put together an IKEA kitchen cart by themselves. Some people got copies of the assembly manual. Others only had a drawing of the final cart.

With the instruction manual, men and women assembled the cart in about the same amount of time on average, and at roughly the same level of quality. Both genders took around 23 minutes to put the cart together, and on average they only made a few small mistakes, like forgetting some screws, for instance.

For those without the step-by-step diagrams, though, the difference between genders was dramatic. Men took around 24 minutes on average, but women took over 28 minutes, a difference of over 20 percent. Had the researchers not cut people off after 30 minutes, the gender disparity might have been even wider. Women were also far more likely to have major problems with their kitchen carts, like missing a shelf or a railing.

I’d always thought that the whole “women can’t do this sort of stuff” meme was based on anecdotal evidence at best. Personally, I find that I’m much better at assembling products like this first thing in the morning and not after the Christmas Eve party and too many glasses of eggnog. And for the record, I should point out that this is a completely biased, false theory put forward by men who don’t have any real appreciation for the talents and abilities of women.

(My wife’s taken to reading the blog lately, though I still wont’ give her a comment account. That’s enough now, sweetie. You can stop reading.)

But seriously, this seems like one of those old wives’ tales (pardon the phrase) which may be rooted in some truth. Why would males be better at finding the right pieces, putting the fasteners in the correct holes and pushing tab A into slot C? Discover Magazine published one of many studies which have been done on the subject (though not specifically with furniture) and found that there’s some truth to it, but it’s complicated.

First, there’s the idea that men are more variable in their intelligence, so there are more very smart men, and also more very stupid ones. This averages out so the mean is the same.

While I’d heard this many times in the past, I’d never seen it explained that way. If their long term test results are accurate, the average woman and the average man are, for the most part, essentially equal in IQ and in the ability to perform these spatial tasks. But the problem comes in with the fact that the ladies tend to be far more homogeneous in their brain structure and function while the gents vary wildly from one to the next. The short version of all that is that there wind up being some men who are a lot smarter and better at certain things but they’re balanced out by the number of us that are complete tools with the mental acuity of a box of rocks. So you’ll find some number of guys who can do massively complex differential equations in their heads at a level that more of the girls won’t manage, but your at least as likely to find a huge batch of us who couldn’t figure out how much to tip the waitress at the end of the meal. (Is that why guys tend to be far, far better tippers?)

Long story short, if you’ve got some presents which require assembly, the ladies now have the perfect excuse to insist that your guy put it together while you get some extra sleep. It’s not discrimination… it’s just science.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/12/19/ikea-furniture-test-proves-girls-are-dumb/feed/1493887990Confirmed: 26 percent of men have “man periods”http://hotair.com/archives/2015/11/19/confirmed-26-percent-of-men-have-man-periods/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/11/19/confirmed-26-percent-of-men-have-man-periods/#commentsThu, 19 Nov 2015 23:21:46 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3884710Well, 26 percent of British men, which is almost the same thing. I keed, I keed.

To cleanse the palate. If you’re a man and you find yourself regularly feeling irritable, tired, and bloated before bleeding out of your vagina, you might be experiencing a “man period.”

Men identified several PMS-related symptoms as indicators of their ‘man periods’, from constant hunger to general irritability.

Increased cravings, tiredness and a “bloated” feeling were also reported, with 12 pc confessing that they were “more sensitive about personal weight”. 5pc of respondents even reported suffering from “menstrual cramps”…

The ‘man period’, which is formally known as ‘Irritable Male Syndrome’, has been heavily researched by Dr Jed Diamond, a specialist in male social patterns who staunchly maintains the condition’s existence.

“It is assumed that women are hormonal and men are moved more by logic,” writes Diamond in his book, The Irritable Male Syndrome. “But men have a number of hormonal cycles and these affect their level of energy, anger, sex drive and irritability.”

It’s not clear from the story if men are experiencing these symptoms regularly or monthly, which seems like an important distinction when hypothesizing about a “man period.” Everyone feels bloated, irritable, and depressed from time to time, i.e. “regularly.” I root for the New York Jets; I feel that way pretty much every weekend. As for other men, maybe they’re around a woman with PMS and feel tired and grouchy because they’re experiencing “sympathy pains.” Or maybe they’re around a woman with PMS and feel tired and grouchy because … they’re around a woman with PMS.

Oxford University scientists investigated how comfortable people are being touched. In the largest-ever study on physical contact, they asked nearly 1,500 men and women from Britain, Finland, France, Italy and Russia to color in human body outlines to show which parts they would allow someone to touch, front and back.

Not surprisingly, they found that the more you know someone, the more likely you are to be happy to be touched by him or her.

Erogenous zones, however, were out of bounds to all but partners, with one exception.

Men indicated they were comfortable with female strangers touching any part of their body, even their genitals. In fact, a woman they barely know has “touching rights” similar to a parent and more than a sibling, according to the journal Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences.

Follow the link and eyeball the diagram at the top of the page to see how comfortable men and women are being touched by various relations, back and front. Yellow means “very comfortable”; as you get into darker shades of red, all the way up to jet black, the comfort level decreases. Here’s the no-go zone for women vis-a-vis female and male acquaintances and strangers, respectively:

Logical and straightforward. Hands off the sexy bits, and if you’re a male stranger, you’d better relegate yourself to the far extremities. Even then, touching a woman’s feet rates as highly uncomfortable, which also makes sense. Since some people sexualize feet, and since there aren’t many casual “hey, lemme grab that foot” moments in polite company, a woman might rightly assume that any stranger who’s eager to touch hers is and can only be a leering creep.

Now for guys. The colors look … different.

A hand on the shoulder from a male stranger will be grudgingly tolerated. A hand nearly anywhere else is asking for a fight. A female stranger, though, can conceivably get away with a hand anywhere — even there, although that dark shade of red proves that the word “comfortable” in the excerpt above isn’t quite right. It’s not comfortable. It’s just not taboo. How come?

The answer, I assume, is that a strange woman assaulting a man that way isn’t the sort of physical threat that a strange man who’s assaulting a woman the same way is. If a male stranger crosses that line with a woman, it implies that he’s willing to cross every line. That’s terrifying. A female stranger doing the same to a man isn’t the same physical threat so the thought of it isn’t traumatic. Nor, of course, do men have to live with the risk of a member of the opposite sex getting grabby the way women do. Ask a group of guys to imagine a scenario in which a strange woman decides to grab a handful and they’re apt to envision it, I bet, either as part of a fantasy or as some sort of goofy sex comedy a la “American Pie.” Ask a woman to imagine a strange man groping her and the scenarios will trend darker. Although that raises another question: If this is ultimately about fear, or the lack of fear, of being overpowered by an insistent pervert, why do women also have strong no-go zones towards female strangers? You can hash that out in the comments.

One more contrast for you, this time involving how the two sexes regard touching by friends. If you’re a man, you’re not real thrilled with being touched by either male or female friends — but there are no official hands-off zones for the ladies:

Now here’s the shocker. When women are asked to say where they’re comfortable being touched by male and female friends, they say … this:

If you take that seriously, not only are there zero hands-off zones for male friends but women are actually more comfortable overall being touched by friends of the opposite sex than men are. That seems … unlikely. Or else intersex friendships abroad have taken a very unusual turn this century.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/30/science-confirms-men-are-comfortable-with-female-strangers-touching-them-anywhere-even-their-genitals/feed/493882357Yeah, yeah… you fight like a girlhttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/01/yeah-yeah-you-fight-like-a-girl/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/01/yeah-yeah-you-fight-like-a-girl/#commentsSat, 01 Aug 2015 23:01:17 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3872025Whenever there’s a slow news day on the weekends, CNN seems to come up with some sort of “question of the day” where they run an ostensibly controversial (but not exactly Earth shattering) story and invite users to weigh in over social media. Such was the case this morning when hosts Victor Blackwell and Christi Paul were running a story on mixed martial arts fighting pretty much in a loop. This tale dealt with the women’s division in the UFC and an upcoming bout involving Ronda Rousey, their undefeated bantamweight champion. So fearsome is Rousey by all accounts that they’re having trouble finding fights for her which are worth taking.

This has led at least some involved in the sport to ask if it’s time for Rousey to “man up” and fight one of the men in her weight class. So that was the question of the day on CNN and the response seemed to be nearly universal in a rare showing of common sense on the web. Nobody thinks this is a good plan. The hosts didn’t seem convinced that it was a good idea. The viewers had all manner of objections. In fact, I’m not entirely sure why this was a question since Rousey herself has said it’s a terrible idea.

“I don’t think it’s a great idea to have a man hitting a woman on television,” Rousey told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “I’ll never say that I’ll lose, but you could have a girl getting totally beat up on TV by a guy — which is a bad image to put across. With all the football [domestic violence] stuff that’s been happening, not a good idea. It’s fun to theorize about and talk about, but it’s something that’s much better in theory than fact.”

Let’s get the obvious point which so many CNN viewers (along with Rousey) made out of the way right up front. Men still shouldn’t be hitting women, and if that turns into a spectacle to broadcast on television there is something very wrong. Enough said on that. But what of the more general question of women competing in men’s sports, and vice versa?

I’m no expert on MMA (I prefer boxing myself) but Rousey certainly looks like a tough competitor at the top of her game. I suppose it’s even possible that there are some male fighters out there who she could beat. But would she be the champion in the weight class? History suggests it’s unlikely. Even in far less combative, physical sports, the innate differences between men and women stubbornly persist. Women have tried to play in the PGA in the past which doesn’t require any fighting. In 2003 Annika Sorenstam, arguably the best female golfer in the world at the time, was given an exemption and allowed to play in a PGA tournament. She failed to make the cut.

Another historical example showed up recently in the context of a different CNN show I’ve been watching… The 70s. In one episode they talked about the era as a turning point in the rise of feminism. For an example, they talked extensively about the “game changing” moment when Billy Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs. But when feminists take that glorious stroll down memory lane, there are a few facts which they seem to forget or conveniently overlook. King was 29 at the time and fresh off her victory at Wimbledon. She was in the best shape of her life and was either the number one or number two women’s player in the world, depending on if you asked Margaret Court. Bobby Riggs was also a Wimbledon champion. In fact, he’d won the tournament in 1939. The guy was in his mid fifties, panting and huffing, and he still managed to take ten games from her over the course of three sets. Is there anyone who honestly thinks she could have taken more than a game or two from Björn Borg, Jimmy Connors or any of the other men seeded at Wimbledon that year?

The point isn’t that men are inherently superior beings, but when it comes to physical competition there are simply differences between the genders. Those show up markedly at the highest levels of competition. And as I said, the more physical it gets, the more those variables become evident. (If anyone can figure out why we need a separate chess championship for women, though, do let me know.) Let’s stop trying to shove women into men’s sports just in the name of proving that we’re all identical. We’re not.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/01/yeah-yeah-you-fight-like-a-girl/feed/1603872025Video: If men were treated like women in the workplace, featuring Carly Fiorinahttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/07/16/video-if-men-were-treated-like-women-in-the-workplace-featuring-carly-fiorina/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/07/16/video-if-men-were-treated-like-women-in-the-workplace-featuring-carly-fiorina/#commentsThu, 16 Jul 2015 20:01:34 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3870125Reminds me of those ESPN ads where a star athlete wanders the halls of network HQ in Bristol, although this is more than just a promo. It’s a smart play by BuzzFeed, which has enough reach with young adults that it could probably get any candidate it wants (Hillary included, eventually) to do a cutesy made-for-viral video like this — especially Republicans like Fiorina who are on the polling bubble for the first GOP debate on August 6th and will happily take some free online media exposure right now.

The clip’s unlikely to move her numbers, but who knows? The difference between making the debate and missing it could be a tenth of a percent. If the video gets passed around enough on Facebook and Twitter — and there’s no site more likely to ensure that than BuzzFeed — and then re-aired on Fox News, it might get undecided GOPers to pay closer attention to Fiorina during the last few weeks before the debate. At a minimum, it’ll earn her some praise as a candidate who’s media-savvy and has a sense of humor; put that together with the point of the clip, that women are treated differently than men, and that’s a bunch of extra pressure on Fox and the RNC to make sure she’s included in the debate.

I’m curious now to see what a jokey yet pointed BuzzFeed take flattering one of Rick Santorum’s core concerns would be. “Thirty-seven reasons why you shouldn’t let Planned Parenthood tear your baby’s head off and sell it to a lab”?

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/07/16/video-if-men-were-treated-like-women-in-the-workplace-featuring-carly-fiorina/feed/1063870125Confirmed: Men are more willing than women to go back in time and kill Hitlerhttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/04/09/confirmed-men-are-more-willing-than-women-to-go-back-in-time-and-kill-hitler/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/04/09/confirmed-men-are-more-willing-than-women-to-go-back-in-time-and-kill-hitler/#commentsThu, 09 Apr 2015 20:41:25 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3858500I … guess this qualifies as a palate cleanser?

If you read only one news story today about traveling back in time to kill Hitler, let it be this one.

Researchers from the US, Germany and Canada analysed data that asked 6,100 people a range moral questions, including whether they would kill a young Adolf Hitler to stop the Second World War.

While men and women both calculated the consequences of their decision and computed how many lives might be saved, females found it harder to commit murder and were more likely to let Hitler live…

“Women seem to be more likely to have this negative, emotional, gut-level reaction to causing harm to people in the dilemmas, to the one person, whereas men were less likely to express this strong emotional reaction to harm,” she told NPR.

Specifically, the study asked respondents whether they’d be willing to kill Hitler circa 1920, before he’d committed any crimes, in order to test their feelings on whether it’s moral to do harm to one person in the name of preventing harm to many. Men were more likely to say yes than women. Other scenarios tested by the researchers involved (a) starving parents asking their teenaged daughter to do pornography to raise money for the household and (b) a group of people hiding from soldiers choosing to smother a crying infant so that the noise doesn’t give their position away … except neither of those scenarios is really anything like the “kill Hitler” scenario. The difference, of course, is the moral culpability of the intended victim in each example. The teenaged girl is innocent, the crying baby is very innocent, and Hitler, with the benefit of time-travel hindsight, is the personification of murderous guilt. If you smother the baby or force the girl into porn, you’re placing your own welfare above theirs; if you strangle the Fuhrer, you’re placing the welfare of millions of innocents above his. How are these situations comparable?

The “kill Hitler” dilemma isn’t a moral dilemma — or it shouldn’t be, ladies — it’s a historical dilemma. If you kill him in 1920, does the world change for the better after that? Hard to think it wouldn’t: The seeds of Nazism would still be there in Weimar Germany but maybe, without Hitler’s charisma to fertilize them, the movement never takes off. Maybe it emerges in another fascist party, or various parties. Maybe those parties hold each other in check, or maybe the one that emerges isn’t *quite* as vicious as the Nazis were. (Again, it’s hard to imagine what something worse would look like.) But then you run into the question of whether, without World War II stamping out German fascism, the seeds would grow more slowly and insidiously over a longer time horizon. Maybe Germany would be fascist today; maybe, without having to worry as much about the great power to the west, Stalin would have clashed with the great power to his east in imperial Japan. Or maybe, without the war to catalyze America’s military presence in Europe, the Red Army would have eventually rolled over Germany and on westward towards the Atlantic. How many million people would have died in those offensives? Would Europe be communist today? (Er, more communist than it is now?) Would turning the Eastern Hemisphere communist be worth preventing the Holocaust from happening? There are moral calculations built into all of those difficult questions, of course, but at base, when you’ve got your pistol pointed at Hitler’s face, you want some sense of assurance that pulling the trigger will make the world better, not worse. I’d do it for the basic reason that it’s unlikely that an alternate Hitler-less history lacking world war and genocide could be worse than one with it, but there’s no getting around that you’re taking a gamble by firing. A big one.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/04/09/confirmed-men-are-more-willing-than-women-to-go-back-in-time-and-kill-hitler/feed/2533858500Guy married five months is terribly worried that men don’t trust womenhttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/18/guy-married-5-months-is-terribly-worried-that-men-dont-trust-women/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/18/guy-married-5-months-is-terribly-worried-that-men-dont-trust-women/#commentsWed, 18 Mar 2015 22:41:45 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3618495In case you’ve grown tired of the national conversation about how the races can’t possibly get along, there’s plenty of other social consciousness raising material available to occupy your time. For just one example, you could read up on how men and women can’t possibly get along. Why? Because men are just awful, obviously. Damon Young, the founder of Very Smart Brothas, tunes in on this critical issue with an editorial at Huffpo this week. The title is really the lede here… Men Just Don’t Trust Women — And It’s A Huge Problem.

Damon goes to great lengths to establish his bona fides in this field, consisting of “five months of marriage, eight months of being engaged, and another year of whatever the hell we were doing before we got engaged.” (I know this is important, not because I say so, but because the author repeats it twice in the column.) And along this long trail that he’s traveled he’s noticed that he commits a regular series of microagressions against his beleaguered wife by not taking her concerns seriously enough. Whether they are talking about the Rolling Stone gang rape story debacle, Bill Cosby or just whatever it is that has her upset on any given day, he just doesn’t assign the same weight to her concerns or opinions as he would if he heard them from a man.

But you know what I don’t really trust? What I’ve never actually trusted with any women I’ve been with? Her feelings.

If she approaches me pissed about something, my first reaction is “What’s wrong?”

My typical second reaction? Before she even gets the opportunity to tell me what’s wrong? “She’s probably overreacting.”

My typical third reaction? After she expresses what’s wrong? “Ok. I hear what you’re saying, and I’ll help. But whatever you’re upset about probably really isn’t that serious.” […]

This is part of the reason why it took an entire high school football team full of women for some of us to finally just consider that Bill Cosby might not be Cliff Huxtable. It’s how, despite hearing complaints about it from girlfriends, homegirls, cousins, wives, and classmates, so many of us refused to believe how serious street harassment can be until we saw it with our own eyes. It’s why we needed to see actual video evidence before believing the things women had been saying for years about R. Kelly.

This may wind up being an informative case of two people looking at the same thing and reaching very different conclusions. And before we get too carried away here, I’ll say that I’ve noticed the exact same reactions in my own life when it comes to the fairer sex that Damon has, at least in some cases. In particular, when some troubling thing crops up, my male friends will approach me one way about it while my wife or other female friends and relatives come loaded with a different package of attitudes. The things that guys react strongly to and their actions in response tend to be markedly different than our female counterparts.

If both my wife and one of my male friends come up to me in a state of obvious alarm or excitation, it might turn out to be something truly important and in need of immediate attention in either case. When there is something important, whether in our own lives or part of some larger national discussion, I take my wife’s opinions seriously. We don’t always agree, but she’s a smart woman – smarter than me – and I know enough to listen when she expresses a concern about a truly serious topic.

But there are plenty of situations which don’t rise to the level of a health crisis or a major national disaster, and I see the genders respond differently. If it’s my buddy Mark coming up to me with his hair metaphorically on fire, it could be that he just turned on ESPN and found out that the Jets decided to go with Geno Smith again. If it’s my wife, it could be that the sink in the kitchen has sprung a leak and flooded the cabinet underneath. The difference here is obvious to any guy. The situation with the Jets is an actual disaster, while the sink is something that will require shutting off a valve, cleaning up a little water and conducting a few hours of repair work. It’s not the end of the world.

Knowing this and reacting accordingly is not some secret way I have of treating women as lesser creatures. But it can be taken as recognition of an important fact which our modern Guardians of Social and Moral Responsibility will deny vehemently. Men and women are different. We think differently. We react to different stress inducing situations differently. We become angry about different things. That doesn’t make one gender better or worse than the other, nor greater or lesser. We’re just… different.

One source of the problems we run into as we seek to even the scales against any perceived injustice is that it’s become trendy to try to pretend that there are no differences between men and women. There are. And those differences are wonderful and they make the world a singularly enjoyable place. (Or, at other times, a reason to lock yourself in your apartment and drink for a week straight.) The point is, it’s not a crime to react differently to emotional situations such as Damon describes above. It’s just nature and it’s not evil.

Vive la difference.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/18/guy-married-5-months-is-terribly-worried-that-men-dont-trust-women/feed/493618495Video: Men wouldn’t try to take advantage of a young woman who’s drunk in public, would they? Update: Hoaxhttp://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/12/video-men-wouldnt-try-to-take-advantage-of-a-young-woman-whos-drunk-in-public-would-they/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/12/video-men-wouldnt-try-to-take-advantage-of-a-young-woman-whos-drunk-in-public-would-they/#commentsThu, 13 Nov 2014 01:41:46 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=2108662Alternate headline: “Yep, chivalry’s dead.” The now famous and (much parodied) catcall video had 35 million views on YouTube as of this morning. This one, posted all of four days ago, already has over three million. There’s high demand for this genre, it seems, which means there’s bound to be more supply. You can see what happens, though, when imitators try to up the ante and guarantee a new viral phenomenon. Instead of an attractive woman dressed normally and strolling through Manhattan, this one has a Megan Fox lookalike stumbling around fake-drunk in a dress cut to mid-thigh. Instead of mild harassment from dudes shouting “hey beautiful” as she walks by, this one’s got something darker — men trying to steer her away from taking the bus and into their cars instead, one of them mumbling about a waterbed. Getting rape-y out there.

One question: Did she meet any guys who tried to help her find the bus? The ratio doesn’t excuse the behavior here but I want to know how big the sample was before we add this to the “Kill All Men” feminist canon. Another question: Er, is this real? I don’t doubt that some guys would behave this way; what seems off is how these five react when she suddenly “sobers up” and walks away. They all seem to give up instantly, as if they understand they’ve been pranked even though she doesn’t say anything about that. A guy in the process of guiding a drunk stranger back to his apartment for maybe-conscious-maybe-not sex would, you would think, not be so easily deterred by a cheery “wait, I feel better now, bye.” And yet three of them are, as if they’ve realized in an instant that they’ve been duly pwn3d and must now slink away in shame. Seems unlikely.

According to two sources familiar with the clip’s production, the men in the video were approached on the street to take part in a “comedic, hidden camera” video. One source, who said he declined an invitation to be in the video, told TSG that he was told the production was a “student video.” He added that the film crew did not ask for participants to sign releases or any other “paperwork.”…

Koshak’s boss, LA Epic owner Christine Peters, told TSG that “Mokii was taken advantage of” when asked to “say a couple of lines for a comedy sketch.” Peters said, “They made it seem like he was trying to take the girl home.” Since the name of Peters’s company can be seen on Koshak’s t-shirt and hat, Peters said she was upset the firm had been “dragged into it,” since “we don’t condone such behavior.”

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/12/video-men-wouldnt-try-to-take-advantage-of-a-young-woman-whos-drunk-in-public-would-they/feed/772108662Quotes of the dayhttp://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/27/quotes-of-the-day-1742/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/27/quotes-of-the-day-1742/#commentsWed, 28 May 2014 02:41:28 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=309544There are no absolute certainties when it comes to mass killers, but a few things come close. Someone will use the term “disaffected youth” to describe the perpetrator. Somewhere there will be a diary—either Tweets, blogs, YouTube videos or scrawled musings in a lined notebook. And the murderer will—with more than a 98% certainty—be male…

There is no shortage of explanations for the overwhelming maleness of the monster population. Some of the answers reveal a lot—and yet nothing at all. Testosterone fuels aggression. Stipulated. Boys take longer to mature than girls. Stipulated. And like the forebrains of young females, those of young males are not fully myelinated until the late 20s or even early 30s. The forebrain is where executive functions—impulse control, reflection, awareness of consequences—live. In the case of males, who are already trip-wired for aggression, that provides a lot of years to behave badly…

But there’s more, and a lot of it has to do with status. Males, for better or worse, are ferociously protective of their position in any tribe, community, or society, and any threat to that position goes to the core of their identity and self-esteem. It’s a common observation in times of recession that while loss of a job is miserable for both genders, it’s the males who are likelier to become completely undone by it. Without the role of worker and money-earner, men feel hollowed-out, and that too often calls for revenge. it’s not for nothing that the victims in workplace shootings are often managers who just the month before demoted or sacked the shooter.

When news of the shooting broke, PUA Hate members attempted to absolve themselves by critiquing Rodger’s sex appeal (“Short lower third and gay midface, with zero brow ridge,” one decided), ridiculing his mother’s looks, and scrambling to assert authority among themselves. (“Only high-T guys should be allowed to give advice here. Nich, can you add that as a rule?” one poster said). Another poster suggested that Rodger was such a Beta that no one would care if he’d murdered people…

Misogyny and violence against women are social problems as well as individual ones. The fact that these men see “game” as the remedy to all personal and social ills is perhaps the greatest indictment of the way they view the world.

***

Rodger’s horrifying violence, the videos he posted, and the way he saw himself are all extreme. But they’re also a reflection of the way poisonous ideals of masculinity affect men. To some extent, I’ve felt the frustration Rodger felt, and I think other men may feel it as well. This is not an excuse for Rodger’s actions, but something more painful: a confrontation of the ways in which he’s not deviant, but typical. Acknowledging that seems like an important part of making sure this kind of thinking doesn’t remain typical any longer…

In her book Between Men, Eve Sedgwick dissects this kind of thinking: Men typically route their feelings toward and competition with one another through women, she says. Women become tools through which men show their power and worth to other men. Success with women is also an important part of men’s self-image—that’s a big part of what it means to “be a man.” This seems to be the kind of thinking at work when Rodger says he feels like women are “treat[ing] me like scum” when they have boyfriends who aren’t him. To him, women aren’t people; they’re markers of who is and who is not a man. If a woman chooses someone else, the thinking goes, that means Rodger and others like him are not men…

This kind of thinking creates a version of male identity that is bifurcated, or split in two. There is the man you should be, and then there is the failed, non-man thing you are. You can see this in ugly detail in Rodger’s videos, where he veers back and forth between outlandish claims of his own magnificence and despairing statements of his own inconsequentiality. At one moment he’s the “ultimate gentlemen,” the next he’s “so invisible as I walk through my college, because none of the girls pay attention to me.” He is super human and then he’s nothing; there’s no space between the two. For Rodger, this could only be resolved with the ultimate expression of “manliness”: violence. “If I can’t have you girls, I will destroy you,” he says. And he destroyed himself, too: that pitiful failed thing who was not a man.

***

Among men, misogyny hides in plain sight, and not just because most men are oblivious to the problem or callous toward its impact. Men who objectify and threaten women often strategically obscure their actions from other men, taking care to harass women when other men aren’t around.

The night after the murders, I was at a backyard party in New York, talking with a female friend, when a drunk man stepped right between us. “I was thinking the exact same thing,” he said. As we had been discussing pay discrepancies between male and female journalists, we informed him that this was unlikely. But we politely endured him as he dominated our conversation, insisted on hugging me, and talked too long about his obsession with my friend’s hair. I escaped inside, and my friend followed a few minutes later. The guy had asked for her phone number, and she had declined, informing him that she was married and, by the way, her husband was at the party. “Why did I say that? I wouldn’t have been interested in him even if I weren’t married,” she told me. “Being married was, like, the sixth most pressing reason you weren’t into him,” I said. We agreed that she had said this because aggressive men are more likely to defer to another man’s domain than to accept a woman’s autonomous rejection of him…

These are forms of male aggression that only women see. But even when men are afforded a front seat to harassment, they don’t always have the correct vantage point for recognizing the subtlety of its operation. Four years before the murders, I was sitting in a bar in Washington, D.C. with a male friend. Another young woman was alone at the bar when an older man scooted next to her. He was aggressive, wasted, and sitting too close, but she smiled curtly at his ramblings and laughed softly at his jokes as she patiently downed her drink. “Why is she humoring him?” my friend asked me. “You would never do that.” I was too embarrassed to say: “Because he looks scary” and “I do it all the time.”

***

Alongside American Psycho and “My Twisted World,” the killer’s autobiography, we could place Hamlet, another story about a hyper-privileged young man whose fury, fear and confusion around sex and manliness sent him into a postmodern spiral of self-obsession and carnage.

In today’s culture, where we sometimes seem to want everyone to be recognized as a hero, we can fail to see that heroism often comes at a great price. Hamlet refused to accept that heroism was his destiny, because of the behavior it required. One tradition of masculinity crashed against another. The result was tragedy.

For too many young men today, something similar seems poised to happen again and again. One tradition of manliness points them toward the worship of wealth, sex, and power—and toward crushing depression if all those things elude their grasp. Another tradition of manliness would point them toward discipline, sacrifice, and self-denial.

How much longer are we going to be in denial that there’s a thing called “rape culture” and we ought to do something about it?

No, not the straw man that all men are constantly plotting rape, but that we live in an entitlement culture where guys think they need to be having sex with girls in order to be happy and fulfilled. That in a culture that constantly celebrates the narrative of guys trying hard, overcoming challenges, concocting clever ruses and automatically getting a woman thrown at them as a prize as a result, there will always be some guy who crosses the line into committing a violent crime to get what he “deserves,” or get vengeance for being denied it.

To paraphrase the great John Oliver, listen up, fellow self-pitying nerd boys—we are not the victims here. We are not the underdogs. We are not the ones who have our ownership over our bodies and our emotions stepped on constantly by other people’s entitlement. We’re not the ones where one out of six of us will have someone violently attempt to take control of our bodies in our lifetimes…

What did Elliot Rodger need? He didn’t need to get laid. None of us nerdy frustrated guys need to get laid. When I was an asshole with rants full of self-pity and entitlement, getting laid would not have helped me.

The people who commit mass acts of violence are crazy. Some are also ideologically motivated. We call them terrorists. And yet while in America we’re quick to recognize and politicize the broader implications of Islamic extremism, misogyny is treated not as an ideology but simply a sub-category of crazy.

That not only ignores but quietly allows misogyny-as-ideology to go unexamined in all its other forms, from domestic violence to date rape to street harassment to economic inequality and more—chalking injustice up to individual aberrations rather than a system of dehumanization that is both perpetuated and protected by our social, political, and economic structures.

If the Santa Barbara shooter had been Muslim, and left the same sorts of video screeds and more, our government and media would undoubtedly be labeling this incident as terrorism. Just as an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist sets out to kill American infidels simply because they are “American infidels,” the Santa Barbara shooter set out to kill women simply because they were women. You tell me the difference. To fail to label the latter terrorism suggests a politicized use of the term, one interested in defending Judeo-Christian Americans and values, but not women.

***

It is striking how therapeutic is the language used by Rodger in his videos and his murder manifesto. He talks about how people’s attitudes towards him “really decreased my self-esteem.” He clearly sees such assaults on his self-esteem as unacceptable, saying “if they won’t accept me… then they are my enemies.” In short, fail to offer recognition to this damaged creature and you will pay the price. And then he makes the key cry of our therapeutic era: “It’s not fair. Life is not fair.”…

This isn’t a religious thing. There’s no evidence that Rodger thought he was a messiah, as other nutjobs have. Rather, it’s a therapeutic thing. Therapy culture has created a new army of little gods made fearsomely angry by any perceived insult against their self-esteem. It has generated groups of people who, like something out of the Old Testament, think nothing of squishing things that offend them or hurt their sense of self-worth. It has made a whole new anti-social generation whose desire to protect themselves from emotional harm overrides the older human instinct to engage with other people and be tolerant of their differences. When Rodger says “I am a living god,” he is speaking, not from any kind of wacky religious script, but from the mainstream bible of therapy. The cult of therapy convinces individuals they are gods and that their self-esteem is a gospel that must not be blasphemed against. As the New York Times columnist David Brooks once said of a therapeutic self-help guide to life, death, and life after death, “In this heaven, God and his glory are not the center of attention. It’s all about you.” The self has elbowed aside God; the self is God, as Rodger seems to have realised.

“I don’t care about your sympathy. I don’t give a s— that you feel sorry for me,” Richard Martinez said during an extensive interview, his face flushed as tears rolled down his face. “Get to work and do something. I’ll tell the president the same thing if he calls me. Getting a call from a politician doesn’t impress me.”

“Today, I’m going to ask every person I can find to send a postcard to every politician they can think of with three words on it: Not one more,” he said Tuesday. “People are looking for something to do. I’m asking people to stand up for something. Enough is enough.”

***

Nevertheless, as disturbing as this is, we have a good word for attitudes and behavior such as this. That word is “crazy.” The essential trouble with the panoply of indignant hashtags and self-righteous op-eds that have appeared in the aftermath of the outrage is that they have tended to establish a false dichotomy: Either one believes that this incident is directly reflective of a given problem or one is denying that that given problem exists at all. This is silly and manipulative. To suggest that the cartoon misogyny of an extremely disturbed young man is not usefully related to women’s rights in general is not to suggest that women face no problems in America at all — any more than to suggest that dismissing as schizophrenia the “microwave machine” surveillance-paranoia of the sick man who shot up the Navy Yard implies that Americans have nothing to fear from wiretaps or the relentless pace of the Internet. It is just to say that the shooter’s ostensible motive is of limited utility going forward, and that if it wasn’t this, it would almost certainly have been something else…

All told, the killer hated everybody. He hated himself. He hated women. He hated other men because women liked them. He hated white people because he was only half-white, and he hated minorities because he wasn’t as non-white as they were. He craved sex, but was also disgusted by it. He hated his classmates, but also his whole town, which he had originally planned to wipe out in toto on Halloween. Four of the victims were men, two were women; three were ethnic Chinese, three were white. This was a crime whose execution was as complicated — and, possibly, as meaningless — as its conception. When terror strikes, the first word to our lips is “why?” We sully the search for genuine answers when, just hours into our inquiry, we are seen already to have woven the questions into our Weltanschauung.

***

Why, in our age of unprecedented plenty—and, at least in America, unprecedented power for women—is victimhood so appealing to so many? When complete strangers were murdered on the West Coast, why do hundreds of thousands of people, healthy in body if not in mind, enthusiastically latch on, insisting that they were victims too?

For certain people, the Internet offers a compelling, powerful alternate universe in which to dwell. Press reports describe the accused murderer as living in a lonely world of YouTube videos, video games, and twisted representations of reality. In his mind, everything—every loss, every perceived failure, every tiny personal slight, real or imagined—was blown out of proportion. Everything was taken personally. Everything, in the end, was all about him and his imagined victimhood.

Scarily, many of the posters on #YesAllWomen, to varying degrees, seem to share the same problem. For all of his hatred of women, the crazed, lonely murderer and the impassioned “feminist” Twitter activists might have something in common after all. Yikes, ladies. Yikes.

***

“Please listen to me,” Beck begged his audience. “You’ve got to get the video games out of your child’s hands. Please. I’m having a hard enough time trying to do it in my own home. … Enough. No more. Because they cannot handle it. This is not the same as Pac-Man. It is not the same. These are virtual worlds where they live. They live in these worlds; talk to them.”

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/27/quotes-of-the-day-1742/feed/653309544Andrea Mitchell: Would our mostly male administration have acted sooner if those Nigerian schoolgirls weren’t girls?http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/14/andrea-mitchell-would-our-mostly-male-administration-have-acted-sooner-if-those-nigerian-schoolgirls-werent-girls/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/14/andrea-mitchell-would-our-mostly-male-administration-have-acted-sooner-if-those-nigerian-schoolgirls-werent-girls/#commentsWed, 14 May 2014 21:01:56 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=308088Via the Free Beacon, the best part here comes when Feinstein challenges her to specify what it is she’s accusing the White House of, and … she can’t. She has no idea where to go with it. It’s as if she came up with the question because she thought it sounded smart — challenging the government to “check its privilege,” as it were — but, when forced to clarify, either realized how moronic it sounds or got cold feet at accusing a Democratic president of counterterror sexism. Normally, this is the sort of question on MSNBC that should and would only be asked of Republicans, just to put them on the spot and force them to answer. As it is, I think maybe Mitchell thought Feinstein would nod along with her in the spirit of sisterhood, Democratic sympathies notwithstanding. Nope. And once she refuses, Mitchell’s reduced to babbling about how the White House might have acted differently if this were “some other cause,” as if the feds scrambling to intervene had, say, a group of Americans been kidnapped instead of Nigerians is some sort of troubling disparity that we should reflect on.

Fully 63 percent of Democrats think the U.S. should “get more involved” in rescuing the girls, although YouGov foolishly didn’t elaborate by asking them if that means merely aiding in the search or going the full J-Mac with boots on the ground to destroy Boko Haram. Dems are the only partisan group to show majority support for intervening in any of the countries mentioned, although pluralities of both independents (45/27) and even Republicans (41/35) agree with them that we should be more involved in finding the girls. I’m not sure what to make of that. I assume it’s mostly a function of expectations about U.S. casualties: When they hear “get more involved,” people are thinking about military intervention, and the only one of the countries listed where there would likely be few or even no Americans killed or wounded in action is an attack on Boko Haram. Score one for McCainism, then. The magnitude of expected casualties is now the touchstone for intervention, not the magnitude of U.S. interests at stake.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/14/andrea-mitchell-would-our-mostly-male-administration-have-acted-sooner-if-those-nigerian-schoolgirls-werent-girls/feed/87308088Bolling, Kelly on Rutgers’ coach: “Wussification of America” or over-the-top?http://hotair.com/archives/2013/04/04/bolling-kelly-on-rutgers-coach-wussification-of-america-or-over-the-top/
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/04/04/bolling-kelly-on-rutgers-coach-wussification-of-america-or-over-the-top/#commentsFri, 05 Apr 2013 01:21:07 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=253210For some quick followup to Allahpundit’s obligatory post, the firing of Rutgers’ basketball coach Mike Rice was one of the topics du jour among the chattering classes the past couple of days. Several of the MSNBCers today were shocked, appalled, and aghast, not merely by the coach’s — er, intensity? — but by Fox host Eric Bolling’s characterization of the incident as evidence of the “wussification of American men.” Bolling took a turn on Megyn Kelly’s show this afternoon to defend his comments, and they got into it a bit panel — so what do you think? Sure, maybe this went kind of over-the-top, but peeps needs to calm down and toughen up? Or a too much of a traumatizing, “degrading,” and “humiliating” attitude for any coach to have?

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2013/04/04/bolling-kelly-on-rutgers-coach-wussification-of-america-or-over-the-top/feed/106253210Gallup: The gender gap is more about men than womenhttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/24/gallup-the-gender-gap-is-more-about-men-than-women/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/24/gallup-the-gender-gap-is-more-about-men-than-women/#commentsWed, 24 Oct 2012 19:21:53 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=225838I can’t imagine why men wouldn’t think President Obama is speaking to them.

Despite the great attention paid to the importance of the women’s vote in the 2012 election, there has been a larger change in men’s than in women’s preferences compared with 2008. Barack Obama’s support is down seven percentage points among men versus three points among women. In Gallup’s latest 21-day rolling average of likely voter preferences, based on interviewing conducted Oct. 1-21, Romney leads Obama by 14 points among men, whereas Obama and John McCain were tied among men in Gallup’s final pre-election estimate in 2008. Obama currently leads Romney by eight percentage points among women, whereas he led McCain by 14 among women in 2008.

Others have reported this before, but Gallup confirms that according to their numbers, “Romney’s slight edge in the overall likely voter preferences reflects the fact that he leads among men by a wider margin than Obama leads among women.”

Men asked about what issues are most important to them responded with “jobs, the economy, the deficit, healthcare, and taxes,” all of which are areas Romney does well, particularly deficit. When asked about issues important to women specifically, women answered by including “abortion” and “equal rights” in their top five. But when asked about which issues were most important to the nation, with no mention of women’s issues in the question, those issues disappeared, and women’s issues and men’s issues became nearly one and the same. That’s why the hold Obama had on some of those women’s votes was, as we now see, rather soft:

The recent fluidity of the women’s vote, and the renewed struggle it has sparked, raises a question: Why, at this late hour of the campaign, when the vast majority of voters have made up their minds, are so many women still apparently open to changing their minds? Why was their onetime loyalty to Obama so weak? Will the president’s forceful new emphasis on women’s issues, particularly reproductive issues, bring them back — or are they gone for good?…

The “binders” line didn’t register at all among the undecided women. Nor did anyone mention the Virginia legislature’s controversial move to require women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds, including invasive ones in some cases. When it happened, Democrats were sure the bill, which passed the state house but was watered down after Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell pulled his support, was their permanent ticket to the women’s vote. But now, outside of Obama rallies, it seems largely forgotten.

Neither does Obama’s trumpeting of his work to ensure equal pay necessarily resonate. A couple of months ago, someone called Dee Ralls, a 49-year-old parole and probation worker for the state, at her house to ask about her vote. She said she wasn’t planning to vote for Obama, and the next thing she knew, there was a canvasser at her door, giving a big speech about equal pay for women.

Richard Mourdock, the GOP Senate candidate in Indiana, made remarks about rape and his pro-life position at a debate Tuesday that are destined to become a “national firestorm” with the combined efforts of the press and the Obama campaign. Romney has already distanced himself from Mourdock, and the left is trying to make him the next Todd Akin. But just because it fits a convenient political template for them doesn’t mean Mourdock’s comments should be treated exactly the same. Here they are:

“You know, this is that issue that every candidate for federal or even state office faces. And I have to certainly stand for life. I know that there are some who disagree, and I respect their point of view. But I believe that life begins at conception. The only exception I have to have on abortion is in that case — of the life of the mother. I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Mourdock has clarified and apologized, but mostly by way of apologizing for offense taken at a meaning he didn’t intend. Democrats are certainly treating Mourdock unfairly to suggest that he implied God intends rape itself to happen, or is applauding its occurrence, as many of these headlines imply.

The country and women are about evenly split between pro-life and pro-choice positions, but the number of voters for allowing exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother is very high. Any time you’re taking a relatively unpopular position that you know, with certainty, you will be asked about, you should have ready for that issue simply the most disciplined, delicate answer you can possibly give. Any Republican who gets into this discussion without knowing that does so at his own peril, especially given that the truly dumb and offensive comments of Akin have created a perfect “national implications” template into which the media can plug even less problematic comments of any Republican on the trail.

And, again, you know what I still haven’t heard a lot about in the national media? The war on women waged by Ohio Democrat Charlie Wilson, with his fists.

The National Committee on Pay Equity (yes, that exists, too) started Equal Pay Day in 1996 to call attention to the gender wage gap. Here’s the idea: It would take the average working woman all of 2011 plus 2012 up to today, April 17, to earn what the average man would earn in just 2011.

That proves that women often occupy lower-paying jobs than men — but does it really prove that women don’t receive equal pay for equal work? Not necessarily. As LearnLiberty’s Steve Horwitz explains in this video, four crucial differences in the way men and women approach work account for the gender wage gap.

Men and women make different educational choices. While men often pursue careers in engineering or other hard sciences, women often pursue careers in the social sciences or the caregiving realm. Some liberals argue that “the pay scale for different occupations is connected to whether or not the occupations are made up of mostly men or mostly women.” (Personally, I find that hard to believe as, once upon a time, primarily men worked in all those occupations, so the different pay scales couldn’t have developed according to whether primarily men or primarily women worked in those occupations.) Sarah Damaske, author of For the Family? How Class and Gender Shape Women’s Work, is one such liberal. “Caregiving, whether done unpaid in the home or for pay outside of it, is not particularly valued in this country and women (whether in the labor market or not) suffer the brunt of this,” she writes. Nevertheless, even Damaske does not argue that occupational differences — many stemming from the different educational choices men and women make — do not account in part for the gender wage gap.

Men and women also often have different expectations about their career. A women who does not expect to work when she has her first child or who expects to go part-time when she has her first child makes different career choices than a man who expects to work his entire life.

Women are more likely to work part-time than men.

Men and women differ in their tenure on a job or the way in which their careers are interrupted.

As Horwitz puts it, until women enter high-paying fields in the same numbers as men and until men share equally responsibility for caring for children, the gender wage gap is likely to persist. “Whatever choices men and women make,” Horwitz says in the video,” the wages they’re paid in the market will reflect the productivity of those choices and are not the result of discrimination.”

I’d argue that it’s OK that a gender wage gap exists, as women likely need and want to be able to trade higher wages for greater flexibility and other perks. Once again, liberals are in the position of suggesting that how much money or material benefits a person receives is more important than intangibles.

When a woman agrees to particular wages for a particular job, she implies by her agreement that she thinks those wages are fair. That assessment really shouldn’t be altered by subsequent knowledge that someone else — whether another woman or a man — receives more. If a woman doesn’t think the pay is fair, she should negotiate for more — or find a job elsewhere.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/17/video-do-women-earn-less-than-men/feed/61190706Oh my: Obama White House paying women employees less than men?http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/11/oh-my-obama-white-house-paying-women-employees-less-than-men/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/11/oh-my-obama-white-house-paying-women-employees-less-than-men/#commentsWed, 11 Apr 2012 20:10:08 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=189701Look on the bright side, David Axelrod. This Beacon story might finally distract people from that instantly infamous photo of the all-white staff at Hopenchange HQ.

Why does our president hate women?

Female employees in the Obama White House make considerably less than their male colleagues, records show.

According to the 2011 annual report on White House staff, female employees earned a median annual salary of $60,000, which was about 18 percent less than the median salary for male employees ($71,000).

The Obama campaign on Wednesday lashed out at presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney for his failure to immediately endorse the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, a controversial law enacted in 2009 that made it easier to file discrimination lawsuits…

It is not known whether any female employees at the White House have filed lawsuits under the Ledbetter Act.

Follow the link for Beacon reporter Andrew Stiles having fun revisiting The One’s various other slights to women over the years, from his all-male golf outings to former communications director Anita Dunn describing attitudes in the White House as fitting “all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.” Some of the things O’s taken heat for in this vein are overblown — this one pops to mind — but I’m keen to hear them explain why there’s an income disparity among their own staff. In some industries there may be a nondiscriminatory reason for a gender gap in pay, e.g., men may be overrepresented in jobs that require lots of strength or dangerous duties, which in turn may pay better because of the risk. But that’s surely not the case in the cubicle utopia of the West Wing. The most obvious explanation in an office setting is that men tend to earn more because there are more of them in senior positions. Is that true, champ? If so, how come?

Judging from the coverage of Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign over the last few weeks, you might think that the former Pennsylvania Senator’s numbers would be cratering among women.

But you would be wrong. Way wrong.

In a new Washington Post-ABC poll, Santorum’s numbers among Republican and Republican-leaning women have soared over the past month. He now has the highest favorability rating among that group of any of the top-tier Republican presidential candidates. …

The poll numbers reinforce findings from recent exit polls that suggest Santorum is holding steady — if not strengthening — among Republican women. In Alabama, Santorum beat former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney by eight points among women; in Mississippi, Santorum took 35 percent among women to 32 percent for Romney.

Cillizza cites three theories for why Santorum has proved so popular with the fairer sex. One theory suggests his increased favorability rating among females is just the result of growing recognition of Santorum’s name, in general. Another suggests women find him a sympathetic figure because he has endured a relentless onslaught of attacks for his social views from the media. A third suggests that he’s successfully framed the key “women’s issue” of this election — the contraception mandate — as more about government encroachment on personal beliefs than about contraception itself.

None of these theories goes far enough. Increased name recognition, for example, doesn’t explain why women like Santorum more than men do. The media theory discounts the truth that all the GOP candidates have been relentlessly vetted by the MSM. The third theory ignores that Santorum hasn’t always done a good job framing the contraception issue in terms of freedom.

So what is it? As a Republican woman who has liked Rick Santorum ever since I first read of his pro-life work as a senator (in an e-mail from a pro-life list-serv to which I was subscribed), I can at least speak for myself. I appreciate that Rick Santorum speaks up for the many women in this country who do have radically different views from the mainstream about what women are uniquely able to offer to society. For too long, feminists have pretended to speak for all of us — as though we are all eager to neuter ourselves, to obliterate gender difference, to deny our own fertility. When Santorum speaks about social issues, I hear in his voice a kind of awe at the mystery of womanhood that is sadly lacking among liberals. His awareness that only women can be mothers — and that mothering, whether physical or spiritual, is something every society needs — permeates his views about, for example, contraception and stay-at-home motherhood as one of the most important careers a woman can choose. Plenty of women never articulate their views about what it means to be a woman, but most of us sense innately that we are different from men and that, in that difference, there is also a complementarity. When we pretend to be like men to prove our equality, that complementarity is lost. When we embrace what makes us women — namely, our unique ability to give birth to the next generation (again, both physically and spiritually) — that complementarity is restored. Santorum encourages us to do just that — to embrace our womanhood.

It’s crazy, isn’t it? That a man has, in a way, become the first in a long time to speak up for the right of women to be women. While the rest of society tells us our fertility is a disease, Santorum tells us (and shows us by his own family) it’s our glory and our strength, our greatest source of influence. What woman wouldn’t like to hear that? We’re not just our fertility, of course, and not all women are able to physically have children, but I fail to see how the denial of a woman’s potential for physical and spiritual motherhood is at all empowering or uplifting.

Again, I speak only for myself here, but I’d be very surprised if many women, even if only subconsciously, aren’t drawn to Santorum as a candidate for the same reasons I am.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/03/20/why-dont-republican-women-have-a-problem-with-rick-santorum/feed/130185724Apple’s covert war on gender-specific expressionshttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/03/09/apples-covert-war-on-gender-specific-expressions/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/03/09/apples-covert-war-on-gender-specific-expressions/#commentsSat, 10 Mar 2012 00:50:24 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=184102Oh, my dear wopeople (that’s “women” for those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Laura’s mocking word for feminists who can’t bear to be identified in relation to men), prepare yourselves to be very pleased. Apparently, Apple’s $20.00 word processing program “Pages” has a feature called “Proofreader” that wages a tidy little covert war on gender-specific expressions. Townhall columnist Mona Charen vents her frustration with the feature, which she unaffectionately nicknames “Proofreadress”:

Pages has traits that are not immediately apparent, however. While it’s a sturdy little word processor, it’s true personality is not revealed until you use the proofreader — or Proofreadress, as I now think of her. Yes, she’s female all right. Seems to have been designed and programmed by the women’s studies department at Cupertino community college.

In a column about Rick Santorum, I had used the word “spokesman.” The proofreader flagged it: “Gender specific expression. Consider replacing with ‘speaker,’ ‘representative’ or ‘advocate.'” Hmm. How would that work? The sentence read, “A spokesman said ‘there is little daylight between Ryan and Gingrich on Medicare.'” None of the suggested words would accurately convey who was talking. Every one would have changed the meaning and confused the reader.

Pages just hates gender specific expressions and is constantly on guard for them. In a column titled “Assad’s Useful Idiots” I had written that Vogue magazine “apparently immune to shame, ran a fawning profile of the dictator’s wife.” Proofreadress was on it. “Gender specific expression. A gender neutral word such as ‘spouse’ may be appropriate.” Really Proofreadress? Spouse is a legal word, good for real estate transactions and rhyming with house in Les Miserables’ “Master of the House.” But as a substitute for wife, it’s ungainly and odd. Wife is a perfectly good word — in fact, it’s a perfectly good status, one that I’m glad to enjoy.

Proofreadress was also unhappy about the next paragraph of that column, when I quoted Vogue to the effect that Asma al-Assad was “glamorous, young and very chic — the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.” Uh-oh. “Gender specific expression. Consider replacing with ‘women,’ ‘people’ or ‘individuals.'” It was a quote, of course, and therefore untouchable. But imagine writing “the freshest and most magnetic of first individuals.”

Yes! Imagine that! Not only is “the freshest and most magnetic of first individuals”a stilted expression, but it’s also a flat denial of one of life’s greatest mysteries — the mystery of sexual difference, of the complementarity of men and women. That difference and complementarity, in case you forgot, is inscribed into our very bodies — and, for that matter, our brains.

Why do feminists perceive it as a threat to gender equality to acknowledge that men and women are, in fact, different? Why are they unable to see that what is uniquely female — yes, I’m talking, among other things, about childbearing and mothering — has a value all its own? By denying the value of the uniquely female, they essentially say women are unequal to men, that what women alone can contribute to society is of less value than what men alone can contribute.

Words matter. If we obliterate all linguistic evidence of gender difference, we’ll have no vocabulary left with which to think of it — and our understanding of the reality of our very selves will be impoverished, too.